It's the end of the road for Windows 10—at least, in terms of its official end-of-life point, as determined by Microsoft. The operating system will keep working, but it will be much less secure, and won't get any more updates or security patches (unless you pay Microsoft to extend support for another year).

If you're still on Windows 10, and your PC can’t handle the full-fat Windows 11, there's a potential solution in the form of Tiny11. This unofficial, stripped-down version cuts out the clutter for a leaner experience, and it can run on machines that don't support the official release.

A lot of preinstalled apps are cut from the Tiny11 experience, including Mail, Calendar, Alarms, Weather, Solitaire, Media Player, Microsoft Edge, and OneDrive integration. This makes it worth a look for those who like Windows but not all the Microsoft extras. However, there are downsides. You don't get regular updates or the same kind of security protections that official Windows 11 offers.

As Tiny11 is stripped down significantly, you might find more obscure features or components missing. And while it's free to download and install, you still need a valid license key to use Windows 11—so this isn't a way of getting the software for free. If you're looking to move from Windows 10 as soon as you can and don't want to pay anything extra, there are other options: installing Linux or ChromeOS Flex.

To get started with Tiny11, there are two ways. The first is to download a ready-made Tiny11 ISO from the Internet Archive; just be sure that the ISO has the official developer NTDEV listed as the contributor and get the latest one available. Alternatively, you can create the ISO yourself: head to the GitHub page for Tiny11, download the 'tiny11maker.ps1' script, and follow the instructions to mount your Windows 11 ISO and run the script.